


All the Skin You're Missing

by Jane St Clair (3jane)



Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-05
Updated: 2011-08-05
Packaged: 2017-10-22 06:28:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/234917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/3jane/pseuds/Jane%20St%20Clair
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tim won't answer the phone.  Dick didn't really expect him to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All the Skin You're Missing

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place immediately post-Identity Crisis.
> 
> Te made me do it. Or possibly I did it because she is the boss of me and doesn't *have* to make me do things anymore.

 

Dick comes over, eventually. Tim hasn't answered the phone since . . .

 

Since.

 

Bruce let him go back there alone. In Bruce's universe, when you lose your parents, it's time to drive all the agony down into a little hard, dark ball and start the process of serious dissociation.

 

Dick's working under a slightly different theory. Dick might have the vigilante tendencies, but Nightwing? Is an extension of *him*. Whereas Batman is something else. And it would be really, really easy for Tim to turn into that other thing. Either the perfect caped vigilante or a very serious crazed villain. Crazed villains are colourful. Clever. Traumatized in interesting ways.

 

That isn't fair. He knows Tim wouldn't. Still.

 

Tim has to know Dick's in the house, but if he cares it isn't evident. Comes out of the bathroom with a bed comforter wrapped around him and just his bare feet and the top of his head showing. Walks straight past Dick without looking at him, into his bedroom and shuts the door. Doesn't lock it.

 

Soft bed-creak as he lies down again.

 

There isn't any evidence of food, here. He doesn't know how long it's been since Tim ate anything.

 

The need that pops up in him to seize Tim and *feed him* is pure Alfred. It's possible this is what the man feels every single time he sees one of them. Or possibly to slap them until they stop behaving like emotionally damaged children with access to too many dangerous toys.

 

Tim's room is. Boyish. Disturbingly tidy. Gravitating almost entirely towards the black hole of Tim at the centre of it. Pale bare feet stick out from the blanket heap, but other than that Dick can't see him. The lights are all off, and the street light is miserable.

 

When it was Dick's turn to do this (god, years ago now and it still hurts so *much* -- he goes to say something to his father sometimes and then realizes the man's been dead for most of a decade and wants to throw up), Bruce had the decency to provide him with a room where no light could get in at all. Alfred used to leave him soup and cookies and sandwiches on a plate inside the door. He turned all the lights in the hall out first so that Dick wouldn't have to look at the light.

 

*Tim*

 

Who doesn't even flinch, really, when Dick pads in and sits on the edge of the bed. Doesn't anything. Just lies there in a tight crumpled-blanket pile and doesn't do anything but breathe.

 

One bare foot that Dick has to rub. Chafe a bit.

 

Tim doesn't want to be comforted. Dick *knows* that. More or less expects it when Tim, who's never been ticklish, whips his foot away. Curls in on himself farther and buries his feet under the blanket. Except Dick didn't let go, so now he's under there too. Just his hand, holding Tim's ankle.

 

It's not reasonable for Tim to be this *little*. He's supposed to grow at some point. When Dick pictures Tim, right now, he looks far too much like Dick at eleven. So very, very wrong.

 

Holding onto Tim's ankle. Squeezing.

 

"No."

 

Squeeze.

 

"No."

 

Squeeze.

 

. . .

 

Rolls himself down against Tim on the bed and lies there for a while, very still, while Tim doesn't move. Then wraps himself around the blanket-lump and hangs on.

 

Breathing, both of them. Dick's been talking for a while before he realizes he is. This tangle of apologies. *I love you*, over and over again. *Please*

 

*oh god I'm sorry

 

I'm so sorry*

 

"No."

 

"I'm so sorry."

 

"*No.*"

 

Tim's there, under the blanket. T-shirt that he must have spent days in. Jeans. There must be marks all over his body by now, from the clothes.

 

"C'mere."

 

Ridiculous, really, given that he's already breath-close. But he needs Tim to sit up. Dick pulls him when he doesn't come right away. Pushes the blanket back and pulls the t-shirt over Tim's head. White-scarred skin under there. Clammy. Tim shakes a little when Dick circles nails over his back. Still sitting up on his own, but Dick keeps scratching Tim's back, and eventually he sags. Leans into Dick's body and stays there.

 

"Yeah."

 

Car lights outside. Little house-creaks. Tim's wound so tight his shoulders can barely move at all. Cried himself into a tension headache earlier, maybe, and he's trying not to do it again.

 

Scratch his back. Slow loops up to the base of his skull and down to his waist.

 

Later, he needs to get Tim into the shower. Hot water and steam for as long as they can stand it -- 'they' because he's pretty sure if he doesn't hold Tim up, he'll drown -- until Tim melts enough for Dick to be able to rub his muscles loose.

 

Tim's hands are twisted up in Dick's shirt. He's not sure when that happened.

 

Both hands in Tim's lower back, rubbing along the spine and wincing whenever it cracks. Tight flesh there makes Tim whimper whenever Dick rubs down into the waist of his jeans.

 

He remembers this. How much it hurt. Bruce wasn't quite prepared to deal with that, maybe because he'd been lying in bone-still agony for so long he'd forgotten how to make it stop. Alfred comforts people with chicken noodle soup and grilled sandwiches made of exotic cheese and not with touch. When Dick hurt this much, he had to physically come and find Bruce, and hold him down.

 

It was a lot like this, actually.

 

Tim's sort of chewing on him. Mouth and teeth at his collar. Little gasps like he's trying not to cry. Dick whispers again *I'm sorry. I love you* and Tim bites him *hard*. Sinks his teeth in and wails softly.

 

"Yeah, I know."

 

He's not surprised when Tim kisses him. He was waiting for it. It's a sad commentary that sex is the best comfort any of them know, but it works. Somewhere in Batman's computers, there's even a study of the biological factors that keep driving to this. Endorphins and brain chemistry and survival instincts. Notes in all their psychological profiles regarding the reasons they keep doing this.

 

Tim hasn't eaten anything in days, but when he was in the bathroom he brushed his *teeth*.

 

Tim knew he was coming. Maybe.

 

Probably.

 

Tim's read those same files. And he's smart, a lot smarter than Dick is, and he's had a lot of time to think about things. Dick wants to believe this isn't completely calculated, but that would be deluded. Somewhere in Tim's head, there's a list: *things that will make me feel better*

 

\- reset-button universe

\- getting my dad back

\- beating faceless people into bloody pulp

\- sex

 

And. Just because it's planned doesn't mean he doesn't mean it. Tim shivers whenever Dick scratches him, pushes back when Dick kisses him. Crawls in so close they have to twist weirdly to keep kissing. Tongue in his mouth, his tongue in Tim's. The breath-stealing isn't so much sexy as deeply possessive.

 

Tim grinds down in his lap.

 

Jeans and teenage-boy boxers come off in a tangle of clothes and Tim-limbs. They're not going to lose their balance, but as long as Tim's up on his knees . . . on his back is better. Naked and hard and staring at Dick. Knees up.

 

He came over here to make Tim feel better any way he could.

 

Pushes the knees apart and leans in between them. Tim jerks a little when Dick mouths his thigh. More when Dick mouths the skin just right of his cock. No teasing, right. Wraps his mouth around Tim's cock head and sucks gently.

 

There.

 

Tim's breath comes out like the air at the end of crying. Fingers crawl down into his hair and grip. *suck me*

 

Tongue. Lips, throat, roof of his mouth. Pull Tim's cock in as far as he can and work his whole mouth around it. Tim's balls are softwarmboyskinsoft in his hand, and Tim thrusts whenever he massages them a little. Pull off and suck on just the head while he jacks Tim absently. This doesn't have to be over anytime soon. The longer it lasts, the longer he has to crawl inside Tim's head and drag him back out.

 

Licks down. Mouths the sac and rubs Tim's cock against his cheek.

 

"Dick . . ."

 

"Mmm?"

 

"Please."

 

Okay, then. Suck him down as far as he can, as hard as he can while Tim snakes a leg over Dick's shoulder and holds him there. Little hip twists and Tim's hissing *please please please* and whining and then

 

whimper arch

 

body-twist

 

"oh god"

 

there. Dick pulls off and kisses him, lays his head on Tim's hip and strokes his belly.

 

Gotham's probably descending into new levels of hell, but neither of them is going out there anytime soon. Batman's out there. Cass is out there. Huntress is out there.

 

Tim's shaking.

 

Dick says, "Come on." Gathers Tim in against him and marches both of them to the shower.

 

Winds up sitting on the floor with Tim wrapped around him while Tim cries. Howling, miserable crying that's nothing like sexy. Keeps him from thinking much about naked Tim mostly in his lap. Just rocks him and pets his soaking-wet hair and breathes the steam. And it does work. The heat and the crying leech the worst tension out of Tim's body, and yeah, he's going to need something for the headache afterwards, but Dick can deal with that later.

 

Tim won't stop crying. Dick leans against the frosted-glass wall. Thinks about dead fathers and dead Robins. White skin turning red in the heat and Tim's face pressed into his body. They're going to be in here for a long time.

 

 

 

[5 February 2005]


End file.
